Happy World Vegan Day

People are born with compassion for all animals and then they are gradually habituated to not caring about the plight of farm animals. Image from Pixabay

The Catholic Concern for Animals (CCA) blog has alerted me to the fact that it is World Vegan Day and the start of World Vegan Month. This has prompted me to do a job that I have been putting off for a while. I have added a new category called “Vegetarian and Vegan” to my blog, and I have gone through my old posts and put the relevant ones into this new category. There aren’t that many but now it’s easier to find them. Just look to the right, under the pictures of the “community posts I like”, and click on the folder icon to see all my categories. You should see “Vegetarian and Vegan” at the bottom of the list.

If you can’t be bothered to do that (and I wouldn’t blame you), I recommend the short stories Alien Report and Alien Harvest. I was working on part 3 but my graphics machine is still causing me problems so I haven’t been able to finish the illustration that goes with the story. There’s also this story that has vegan leanings.

Sarah, my son, David, who lives in Taiwan. I always wonder if he is a vegan? At any meal or food If he finds meat of any kind, he would not touch the meat only but everything else. Such as beef stew he would eat the potatoes. Chinese style meat buns, he would eat the outside floor skin. Unlike many other vegans that I know, they would touch the whole food with meat. He told me once that he cannot eat any meat simply because he cannot stand to picture when that animal was killed.

Really? But milk should be fine!
I was told by the Buddhism also vegans. They said because while Sakyamuni was fasting and praying he was almost killed by starvation. A shepherd girl gave him some milk and saved him.
My son eats cheese and eggs too!

Yes, lots of Buddhists are vegan, particularly in India. Some won’t even eat root vegetables so that no earth-dwelling creature is killed.
Milk and cheese production in developed countries involves separating mother cows from their calves. The male calves mostly go off to slaughter. There is a lot of cruelty involved.

Hi SR, yes, it’s a lot easier to justify eating animals when they’re your own, when you’ve cared for them, and when you know that they’re killed with minimum cruelty. But the act of taking a life is cruel in itself, don’t you think? Anyway, most people don’t have the luxury of raising and killing their own animals. They have to rely on the meat industry which is not geared to the animals’ best interests, or even to the consumers’ best interests.
Thanks for your input. 🙂 God bless you too.

Yes, this comment came through okay. 🙂
Did you read my post about Adam and Eve being vegan? I don’t think God originally intended for us to eat animals. It was only after the flood that He gave us permission to do that. Anyway, I think each case has to be weighed on its own merits. Most people in the West can be healthy on a vegan diet. Other people, such as yourself, find it more difficult or, as in poorer countries or those with extreme climates, cannot provide a sustaining diet without exploiting animals to some extent.

Hi Sarah! I was once a vegetarian (not a vegan)… much to the annoyance of the rest of my family I must add, who all love meat. Then one day, ten years ago, I had a terrible cycling accident and almost bled to death on the road. I needed two blood transfusions, a four and a half hour operation on my leg to close all the ruptured artery and veins, and an eight day stay in hospital.

The surgeon told my family I was lucky to still be alive, because not only had I lost a vast amount of blood, and was underweight, but that I was also “markedly anaemic”! This was such a shock to me. With my diet of mostly vegetables, legumes, fruit, nuts, soya milk and a couple of eggs per week, I thought I had been eating very healthily. But apparently my need for iron was not being met by this diet! I was informed that unless I wanted to have daily iron injections (ouch!) for the rest of my life, I would have to go back to eating red meat at least twice a week, this being the best natural source of iron.

Well, I decided I had really no option but to do that. I found it really hard, still do, as I am not keen on meat (for various reasons, including your own) but I am now no longer anaemic, and my weight is back to normal again.

Hi Kathleen, sorry for the delay in replying; I wanted to wait until I was back on my laptop with a proper keyboard.

I was sorry to hear about your accident. I hope you didn’t have any lasting problems apart from the diet. As far as anaemia goes I had it the other way round. When I was pregnant with my first child I was still a meat-eater but a blood test revealed that I was anaemic. I found some iron supplements that were easy to digest (Spatone – a mineral water rich in dissolved iron). I got my iron levels up to normal. Then about 2 years later I went vegetarian. I’ve had my iron levels checked quite a few times in the twenty-odd years since then (including during my second pregnancy) and all is well even though I don’t take the supplements every day. I wonder if you would do okay with this kind of supplement? I know everybody is different and reacts to diet in different ways but it might be worth consulting your doctor and giving it a try, under supervision, since you seem to not particularly like being a meat-eater.

By the way, another nutrient that can also be lacking in a low meat/dairy diet is Vitamin B12. This is fairly easy to remedy. It’s often added to fortified breakfast cereals and other fortified products, and it’s in things like Marmite/Vegemite. You can also, obviously, get it in vitamin pills. It’s possible that your extreme symptoms may have been aggravated by other nutrient deficiencies, like B12.

I hope you don’t mind my input. I’m not trying to push you into anything, just providing ideas/information. I wouldn’t condemn you for staying as you are. 🙂

Now it’s my turn to apologise for the delay in replying, Sarah 😉. And also I apologise for saying the accident was 10 years ago, when in fact it was 8!

In answer to your question: no, I don’t really have any lasting problems after the accident, except for a lack of feeling down the inside of my left leg, owing to so many of the nerves being severed at the same time as the veins! The feeling has certainly improved over time, but will never be 100%. (In braking far too suddenly while speeding round a corner downhill on the bike – silly me! – I jammed the brake handle deep into my thigh! I was also very badly bruised.) For a time even after leaving hospital on crutches, I could barely bend my leg at all, and it was incredibly tender and sore. But I was determined to return to my usual sporty self, so I went for lots of physiotherapy, and diligently kept up the exercises the doctors gave me, despite the pain at first, and I got better, Deo gratias.

The muscles eventually got strong again, but I’m left with a whopping big scar on my thigh. That doesn’t matter of course. It took me a whole year before I dared get back onto my bike, but now once more it’s my main method of transport.

To many my complete recovery was little less than a miracle!
Our Lady saved me from bleeding to death, Sarah – I’m convinced of it. She is a true Mother, and I love her dearly.
As I lay on the road with my blood gushing out I had a vivid sensation of her closeness to me. I tried to pray the Hail Mary and begging Mary not to let me die yet, while feeling myself slipping into unconsciousness. The ambulance team arrived before I did, and gave me immediate first aid, including tying an agonising tourniquet on my leg to stop the hemorrhage.

Thank you for sharing more about your ordeal. We Catholics are so fortunate to know that we have Our Lady watching over us. I’m only a recent convert but I’ve quickly come to see how much she cares for us. I had a difficult relationship with my earthly mother so it took me a while to trust Mary but when I handed myself over to her earlier this year, wow! The Catholic faith is so beautiful and full of treasures, it’s very hard to see friends and family struggling without it.

As for the vegan issue, let me first say that I’m not vegan either. I don’t use milk but I do have the occasional egg or bit of cheese. If I was on my own I wouldn’t but I guess I’m too lazy and/or cowardly to make the changes to family life that would be required.

I could post any number of videos that demonstrate the harm done to dairy animals but I don’t want to traumatise you. I’ve seen plenty of them and I wish I could scrub the memories from my brain. Let’s just say that, even if gratuitous cruelty could be avoided, the dairy industry is _inherently_ cruel. If you think about it for a minute, it is an industry that requires mostly female animals. What happens to the surplus male animals? Another example: for us to get milk from a cow she needs to have recently been pregnant but no longer feeding calves. Cows are repeatedly impregnated, separated from the newborns, hooked up to milking machines, and then slaughtered when they no longer produce enough milk. This is not a benign industry.

Thanks for the concern, SR. 😀 I’m fine, I’m just going slow on the blogging. Every so often I feel like it’s taking too much out of me so I dial it back a bit. I’m very introverted so even remote contact gets too much some times. May God bless you too. 🙂

Thanks, SR, that’s very kind. I’m a sporadic blogger. I’ve come close to quitting the whole enterprise a few times but somehow I keep coming back. If I ever disappear for good and you want to get hold of me (or anytime if you like) you should be able to find my email address with my comments in your WordPress Admin tool.

You are so sweet Sarah. Thank you. I sure would hate to lose you, but I understand. I have shut a couple of them down myself. Last time I stayed away for a year. If you do close down let me know so I can put your email in addresses, if you do not mind. You can email me anytime you want also. Love you and God Bless, SR

Thank you very much, Sarah, for all your kind advice on ways to avoid anemia without having to eat meat. I did try some oral medicine at first, something similar to Spatone (better than those disgusting iron vials I also tried) so as to avoid iron injections which are incredibly painful. But the taste of iron in the mineral water was still like rusty nails, and I hated it so much I had to give it up.

I don’t mind too much any longer in having to eat red meat only twice a week (and often in the form of mince disguised in lots of lentils and/or vegetables); it’s done the trick. I’ve sort of got used to it anyway; and my iron level in the blood is fine now, which is a great relief.

I still think a vegetarian diet is best, but some people (like me) seem to have a tendency to anemia, despite taking plenty of all the foods that contain natural iron, e.g., lentils, spinach, parsley, etc.
I could never be a vegan though, despite not drinking much milk. I eat eggs occasionally and some cheese too. I don’t understand the objection to eating products that come from animals but do not harm them.

Thank you, Baba, I’m trying to keep off WordPress as much as I can during Advent so I’ll keep this short. Thank you for reminding us of what our priorities should be. The ideal would be to have respect for _all_ of creation.